I did request an accounting for my donations, so I would get a tax deduction in the future. Yes, we still had taxes, in the form of a direct sales tax, payable in ammunition. Getting the receipt was just the accountant in me, but Colonel Northcutt agreed and I think he almost smiled at the idea.
I continued to kill zombies throughout the rest of the day and soon fell into a rhythm where I could function mechanically while my mind teased at bigger picture problems. Despite a few of the younger officers complaining that I was a mercenary, I felt like what I did contribute to the survival of the human race. What I did mattered. If some part of humanity could survive this catastrophe, then I could die knowing my job was done.
Of course, what I wondered about was the endgame. What was the colonel’s ultimate goal in creating these safe zones? Did he want to go bigger and try to exterminate all the zombies, or was he merely content to seize as much property as he could and wait for the zombies to naturally decay. Both options offered advantages but so far the Colonel remained noncommittal.
If he was waiting for Nature to take a hand, I think he was going to be sadly mistaken. Based on my observations and completely non-scientific study, the decay of the dead seemed to reach a certain point and then just appeared to stop. The oldest ones, from what we called the First Wave, were still going strong. Zombies were rotting, stinking pusbags but other than the fluids drying out and the skin assuming the texture of dried leather, the eventual breakdown had yet to occur. If anything, the older ones seemed to get around a little better once they stopped dripping and oozing. I’d yet to secure one of these for our resident mad scientist, Dr. Gurha Singh.
To this point, I’d only dared share my observations with Dr. Singh, who seemed eager for any field data I could supply. As one of our few “real” doctors, as in, possessing a medical degree, he was forbidden from straying out from the protection of the main settlement on Lake Livingston. Colonel Northcutt himself gave the order, one I fully endorsed. Singh was a nice enough guy but I figured he would last about thirty seconds outside the walls. Smart as a whip, and with the common sense of a gerbil. Not a very intimidating ‘mad scientist’ in truth, but he was the only one I had to work with.
This day, when I stopped for lunch, I turned off the boombox to give myself a little peace and quiet. The constant music did great drawing in the dead but I didn’t care for an all-day concert. Plus, despite my best efforts, the pile growing at the front of the store continued to build. The metal shutters still held but the glass panes inside began cracking and then shattering before ten a.m. I wanted to let the zombies take a coffee break and walk off some of that innate aggression before I started back trimming the horde. With no additional stimuli, they should lose interest fairly quickly and revert to aimless wandering.
When I finished my heated can of beanie weenies, mmmmm good, I stashed my trash and took a seat next to the tent, trying to find a little shade as I once again went about reloading magazines. I worked silently, my movements developed over months of practice to avoid making any discernible noise. Of course, brass clanked together and springs occasionally gave a little ping, but no human sounds. The zombies would hopefully be dispersed a bit after this break.
Not for the first time I wondered if I could hire someone to just ride along with me to run the reloading gizmos and stuff rounds into the magazines. I tried to get the soldiers who came along to help out with this but strangely, they just wanted to spend their time shooting zombies. Then after a couple of hours of shooting and looking at that sea of the dead, they really didn’t seem interested in doing much of anything.
Maybe I could post a ‘help wanted’ sign on the bulletin boards. I could pay a decent wage in silver or salvage goods and having someone along to handle reloading might save not only time but wear and tear on my poor fingers. I already had impressive calluses on my fingers, and still they bled from time to time. I reminded me of something I read about musicians who played guitar without using a pick. ‘Played until their fingers bled’, I think was a line from a song I half recalled.
Yeah, like that could happen. I hadn’t tried recruiting from the ‘civilian’ ranks yet, but fat chance. Once most folks got behind the relative safety of the walls, getting any of them to set foot outside required extraordinary effort. Heck, most of the guardsmen and the militia would have stayed inside if the need was not so great.
Yes, the colonel endorsed a well-regulated militia to go along with his National Guard troops, who by now were grizzled old veterans of the ongoing conflict. Colonel Northcutt could not bring himself to officially call them a militia in his reports, of course, given all the evil connotations such a label spawned, even in Texas. No, they were the Home Defense Force, which consisted of everyone willing to carry a weapon that hadn’t, for one reason or another, enlisted in the Guard. Mostly, because they were older than dirt or under the age requirement for the Guard, which was 17. They might be a raggedy looking bunch but they would stand the walls and fight. Or go out and scavenge if the Colonel asked them.
Thinking about it, I decided to approach one of the old guys there about working as my assistant. That sounded better than ‘reloading mule’, anyway.
Just about ready to clock back in after my mandatory one-hour lunch (based on my one-man union rules), I ambled over to the short parapet to take a leak and nearly pissed on myself instead. Even with the music off and with my noise discipline in place, the zombies continued to pile on the growing mound of writhing bodies. Crap, didn’t they hear me when I called for a lunch break?
Cursing myself for growing complaisant and letting my attention wander, I hustled back over to my firing position and grabbed another rifle. Not bothering with the shooting seat, I stood at the edge of the short wall leading to a scene from hell and began picking off zombies. Like the day before, I focused on catching the dead in the act of movement, using their awkward climbing motion to peel away the corpses and chip away the pile. I was killing one every few seconds and still the tide continued to roll toward me.
When the Ruger finally jammed, I carefully set the rifle aside and retreated a few steps to retrieve another. In those few seconds, the first of the mangled crawling corpses crested the parapet and tumbled over onto the asphalt and gravel roof. The blind eyes cast about for a meal even as I fired a single round into that blood-encrusted skull. Then I did it again for the next, and the one after that.
For five minutes I stood as close as I dared and shot everything that moved that wasn’t me. I reached a cold frenzy, my hatred of the dead driving me beyond fear, beyond reason, and I continued to deal final death to these creatures. These monsters that killed…
I felt my mind slipping even as I saw the numbers becoming fewer and fewer. With an effort of will, I reined in my bloodlust and dared to scoot closer to the edge of the building for a quick glance. During the hottest part of the fight, I’d dimly registered a crash below, and now I needed to investigate.
As I suspected, the weight of the bodies resulted in the steel shutters and the store front finally giving way. Now half of the writhing mound of dead and animated corpses were trapped inside the store. That sucked, and the colonel might be pissed at losing the store, but the collapse maybe also saved my life.
Looking down again, I caught sight of a zombie at the pinnacle of the pile, hissing and grasping up with hunger driven fury. A mindless craving for my flesh, driving the creature beyond reason.
The monster used to be a woman, and despite the cataract-like clouding of her eyes and the missing flesh from its right cheek ripped down to the bone, I recognized it. I recognized her. Her name had been Mary Beth Sholter at one time, when we had been in school together about a million years ago. And now she was dead, and trying to eat me.
I froze, staring into those hazy gray orbs and remembered. We had been friends through junior high and high school, and as often happens, she agreed to go out with me a few times. We never advanced past a friendly relationship, but as I hung out with Mary Beth,
I got to know her little sister. And we…
Howling, my fury broke the spell of those damned eyes and I emptied the rest of the magazine into her face, obliterating the flesh as I strove to destroy the memory as well. The corpse cartwheeled off the pile and took out three more zombies on the way to the body covered ground.
“Thank you, sweet baby Jesus” I whispered, drawing in great heaving breaths of the foul air. Coming back to Jasper suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
I stepped back, retrieved a messenger bag full of loaded magazines and resumed my stand on the parapet. For the next four hours I would do nothing but kill zombies and keep my mind focused on the task at hand. I killed mechanically, with focused precision and never once did I dare look into their filmy gray eyes. I only stopped when the filled magazines ran out, forcing me to stop for a time.
I would not allow myself to think of the now fully dead woman I used to know, or her equally dead sister. Mary’s Beth’s sister, the woman I married fifteen years ago, and the mother of my son. My poor dead wife, may God forgive me.
CHAPTER THREE
“What the fuck?” I muttered aloud, watching the car rapidly approaching from the south, hauling ass up Highway 96. Through my binoculars, I could barely make out a small green hatchback as it jetted down the wrong side of the divided four lane highway. The sound of the engine, while still over a mile away, echoed in the stillness broken only by the hissing of the zombies and the occasional shuffle of feet on the gore splattered road.
Going the wrong way made sense, at least. The northbound side was packed with wrecked and abandoned vehicles. Flotsam left over from the ill-fated surge of refugees seeking to flee the Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange urban zones. Like the Houston to Kingwood corridor on Highway 59, another area claimed almost entirely buy the dead.
So, taking the southbound lanes was the smart way to go, but not at that speed. Zombies had a maximum cruising speed of about four miles per hour, except for the fresh-turned, who got up to a blistering ten miles per hour at best. So, eleven miles per hour should keep you safe from zombie pursuit, except for all those attracted to you from the noise and waiting in front. Still, seventy or eighty miles per hour with these kinds of road hazards appeared suicidal.
I was on day three of my rough clearing project and after my furious assault on their numbers from the day before, I was sore and my forearms ached from the repetitive motion. My blistered fingers still bled through the bandages, and I could barely stuff my hands into the shooting gloves this morning. On the other side of the ledger, I’d managed to chop down the horde into a much more manageable number. In addition to the ones trapped in the still mounded-over store interior, I figured no more than three hundred zeds were still closing in on my position.
So, I’d almost crippled myself while managing to kill nearly four thousand zombies the day before. Well into the night, using the night vision goggles and cursing under my breath, I continued to rain destruction down on people who had been my friends and neighbors growing up. At least, I saw no more familiar faces in the crowd of the undead. Or so I told myself.
My family had lived just outside Jasper for three generations, and even after moving to Houston I…we, continued to drive up at least one weekend each month until my father died. After that, the visits continued but were much more sporadic. Still, I considered the town my home, while Houston was just the place I stayed for my work.
Zooming in with my binoculars, I could now make out more details as the car drew nearer. Splotches of movement beside and behind the little hatchback resolved into a quartet of motorcycles, attempting to bracket the speeding little car. Idiots. Motorcycles offered next to no protection from the zombies. A simple collision that might dent my truck’s hood, never mind the cowcatcher front bumper I’d added, would result in even the heaviest motorcycle going down. And likely into the waiting clutches of countless zombies, eager for that tender human flesh.
Luckily for the bike riders, my clearance efforts in town gave them a relatively free ride that way, but what were they doing? Then I saw one of the bikers lining up on the rear of the car, leveling something that gave a bright flash. So definitely pursuers, not an escort.
Moving a tick, I glassed the occupants of the small car and saw long hair and frightened faces. The faces of women, terrified. Well, isn’t that just dandy, I thought to myself as I dropped the binoculars around my neck and hustled over to my tent. Stacked neatly next to the remaining boxes of ammo, I found two Pelican cases stowed just where I left them.
I thought of the monster in the first case and decided to hold onto that bad boy for later and went with the second case. Flipping the latches, I opened the lid to reveal a long barreled rifle topped with a massive 8x scope. The Winchester Model 70 was a sweet hunting rifle, an antique handed down to me from my father. I wasn’t carting it around for sentimental reasons, though. The Model 70 was the most accurate mid distance rifle I owned, and today I would get to use it once again. I had no compunction about shooting at the living. We’d fallen back a bit into frontier justice, with killing scumbag bikers to protect damsels in distress being a valid use of force to the Guard. I’d already seen some of that shit in Houston almost from the moment the first dead man got up and bit his neighbor. Or dead mother, her son. These predators, or others like them, were the reason I always brought extra weapons.
Moving quickly, aware that the women in that little tin can car could run out of time at any second, I still forced my fingers to carefully feed the match grade 30-06 cartridges into rifle. I couldn’t risk a jam or malfunction, not with lives on the line. Shoving a handful of spare rounds into my vest pocket, I approached the southern edge of the building.
By the time I finished prepping the Winchester and hunkered down in a prone position, the little green hatchback, and the bikers, were nearly in range. I noted absently that a pod of about fifty zombies broke off their lumbering approach on the Dollar General and veered in the direction of the noisy caravan. More shots echoed as the bikers seemed to be jockeying for position, intent on shredding the car’s tires. The car’s driver swerved and juked aggressively, trying to throw off their aim.
At four hundred meters, I squeezed off my first shot. Miss. Well, I missed the rider but struck the bike. The biker, jerking his bike aside to avoid trash in the road, was caught off balance as the heavy slug struck the metal frame of the Harley and ricocheted down. Whatever the bullet hit caused the engine to seize up and the wheels locked, causing the man to catapult over the handlebars at breakneck velocity. He hit the asphalt like a bag of dropped garbage and appeared to explode on impact.
One down. Fluke, but I would take that to the bank. That was one bandit who certainly wasn’t going to get up. At least, not as a human. He might rise, even if not bitten, but even zombies need their heads intact.
Since I’d targeted the trailing rider, the other three did not notice anything amiss until I fired the second time, and this was a solid hit on one of the riders. I was shooting center mass, aiming at a slightly quartering target, and my bullet shattered the windscreen of the front left rider before plowing into his midsection. I’d rushed the shot and only took it because the man dressed head to toe in leathers appeared to have given up on shredding the front tire. The bullet struck him in the gut just as he was raising his shotgun for a more convenient target. The driver.
The sudden spray of blood exiting the stricken biker’s back caught his two surviving compatriots off guard. They went from being the predators to the prey in the blink of an eye.
The biker riding parallel to the passenger side suddenly veered wide, seeking to throw off my aim in a wild maneuver that almost worked. He evaded a bullet that was a clean miss and instead, ran straight towards the back of a wrecked station wagon sitting on the side of the road.
I used to watch reruns of that old cop show when I was a kid. “CHIPS” I think it was called. Every week, the directors and producers of the show managed to work great stunt jumps and car rolls
into the thin plot where good always triumphs over evil and the studly cops were always in pursuit of hot girls with big hair. So, being raised on that sort of fare, I half expected the Harley lowrider to somehow catch the bumper of the half-burned Mercedes station wagon and take flight.
Instead, the heavy motorcycle impacted the rear of the much bigger vehicle with a bang audible all the way up in my perch. Three down, and with three bullets. If I ever told the story to anybody, that was how it would be told. No mention of the errant shot, since I herded the guy into a fatal accident anyway.
The last rider, probably the brains of the outfit, took advantage of the distraction caused by his buddy’s fatal miscalculation and braked hard and expertly. Spinning the bike in a tight arc that looked showy but also efficient, he slung the motorcycle back the way he came and opened the throttle. Through the scope I saw the jacket he was wearing heavy duty leathers. Tarantulas, read the black gothic script. Well, at least I knew I was killing the right guys after all.
Taking a second, I fed two spare rounds into the magazine and reset the rifle. He was moving fast to get out of range but made for a steady target. I aimed for the spider in the middle of his back, exhaled, inhaled, and squeezed the trigger when everything felt in balance. With what little wind stirring the midmorning air coming directly in from the south, I didn’t even need to factor in much of anything except bullet drop.
I saw the rider jerk, then slump, then lose it as the bike seemed to leap out from underneath him. I gauged the range at nearly five hundred yards. For a sniper, no sweat. For me, that was a long, long ways off to be killing somebody. Or even shooting at paper, come to think of it.
Sighing, I rolled back and looked down at the rifle in my hands. My Daddy loved this thing, claimed it shot the same whether the barrel was cold or not. Not really possible, but I didn’t dispute the old man’s brag. It would be like challenging somebody’s fishing story. Sober, doing so violated the guy code. With a few beers, though, fishing stories became fair game. Of course, I didn’t do much drinking with my father growing up. He wasn’t much of a beer drinker in general, and even after a few stolen sips I secretly knew I hated the taste.
Hunger Driven (Book 2): Fight the Hunger Page 3
